Hearts 'could have had a penalty' against Aberdeen as Dons star branded lucky boy after clattering Jambos ace

Hearts have been told that they were unfortunate not to have received a penalty in their 1-0 loss against Aberdeen.

A Topi Keskinen strike in the first half was enough to hand a first Premiership loss of the season to the league leaders, who were missing key stars like Lawrence Shankland, Beni Baningime and Craig Halkett. Derek McInnes’ men still remain first but Kris Boyd reckons the Jambos were denied a chance to level things up from the spot.

As Hearts launched a ball into the Aberdeen penalty area, Dons goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov crashed into striker Pierre Landry Kabore as he attempted to get the ball. There was no penalty given on the field and VAR didn’t get involved in the incident either as play soon continued. On Sky Sports punditry duty for the game that was shown live via the broadcaster, the ex-Rangers and Scotland striker reckons that Mitov playing between the sticks doesn’t give him the right to wipe out opposing players.

Could Hearts have had penalty vs Aberdeen?

Boyd told Sky Sports: "I think they could have had a penalty as well, Hearts. I really do. I think Mitov's lucky to get away with one here. I can totally understand why it's not been given, because he comes and he misses the first one. I know you can't stop, but there's a way to go into the second one guy.

"You can see here, his foot is up and he just crashes straight into Kabore there. For me, he's very, very lucky there. He's totally miss-timed it, doesn't get anywhere near the first one when Frankie Kent nips in in front of him. And he just wipes Kabore out. For me, I think that can be a penalty.

"See if that's an outfield player? That's given. Because you're a goalkeeper, you can't just fly through the air and wipe people out. He just crashes right into him with his foot right up."

Derek McInnes on Aberdeen 1-0 Hearts

He added on the overall Hearts display: "I don't think Hearts were bad in the game. They maybe lacked that little bit of quality. Maybe with Shankland at the top end of the pitch rather than Kabore. But I don't think Hearts had a bad player on the pitch. It was actually a decent game. There was a few tackles, it was a pretty old school one. There were tackles flying in, not really much discussion with VAR and I thoroughly enjoyed it."

McInnes said of the loss: “I thought we were decent throughout the game. I thought we had good poise in the game and I thought we created some good moments. If you don't take your chances here, if you don't show the quality and composure that's needed to win at Pittodrie, then you run the risk of losing the game.

“We didn't really have too much to do defensively, but we lose on a transition. We give the ball away 20 or 30 yards into their half and it's one pass forward and before we know it we're in a difficult situation. We just don't come up in the same [defensive] line and it's a good goal from Aberdeen's point of view I'm sure.”